Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
Martin thank you, it's nice to know where you stand. I've started something like 90 odd threads since we have switched to this format and probably that many before. I think you need to step back look at your post and perhaps do a little reading before accusing others.
I wish I knew half of what Ole, Cash, Neil, Hal, Larry or any one of a myriad of other equally bright minds here do. I'm quite honored that Ole thinks I know more than he does... though it can only be true on a very narrow portion of the subject.
A lot of people on this forum know a LOT more than I and I have learned alot from their discourse because I'm willing to admit that. I have learned a lot in particular from those who have a view diferent than my own, the other side of the aisle so to speak. When I have to check references and cross check sources I am learning. Sometimes I even change my opinion and I have even been known to eat a little crow. The day I stop learning is the day I stop living.
I will not "shut the hell up," nor will I ask Ole or Cash to. I also have never asked nor am I likely to ask Thea, Bill or any other member from the other aisle to. Ami has placed a "sticky" on the subject of rudeness which you replied to by baselessly acusing her of bias so there is no doubt you have read it; please adhere to the rules of the forum that you agreed to when you joined.
A one sided discussion is pretty boring and is all that is required for ignorance to fester hatred.
As it is I bid you a good day.
__________________ Shane Christen
American Legion Post 352
SUVCW Camp Abernethy# 48
Lifetime NRA member
3rd MN VI
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Eccl 1:18
I ran across a site that discusses the secession voting in Tennessee and secessionist sentiment in Kentucky (measured by Union enlistment, since there was no vote in Kentucky). The conclusion:
"In Tennessee, of the forty-four counties where the vote for secession was by at least a two to one margin, thirty were in the top two categories of slaveowning described. Fourteen of the seventeen Kentucky counties with lowest levels of Union volunteering fell in one of the two higher categories of slaveowning. Of the extremely Unionist Kentucky counties (which sent higher percentages of population to the Union Army than did New Jersey), twenty-three had the lowest level of interest in slaveowning (less than one in six potential voters owning slaves). In Tennessee, of the thirty-one counties voting against secession, twenty-seven exhibited the lowest levels of interest in slaveowning."
RebProf
What a good question. Legally, only the men (head of the family) owned the property. If you count only the legal property owners the percentage of slaveholders is rather low, somewhere just under 10% of the Southern population. Because of this low numbers those who wish to emphasize the role of slavey in the Civil War use the total number of family members as slaveholders to increase the percentage. Mark Twain warned us about those who cite statistics.
The percentage of slaveowners should be a ratio of those who were counted as slaveowners compared against the pool of people who were eligible to be counted. In this pool, we do not include enslaved negroes, dogs, mules, or goldfishes on the non-slaveholder side of the ratio, because they are not able to own slaves. As you have asserted above, non-heads of households were not either. Women and children in a slaveowning household may not have legal title to the slaves (I'm not sure that's entirely correct), but it is misleading to use their numbers on the non-slaveowner's side of the ratio to reduce the overall percentage. So Mark Twain is completely correct.
Dividing the number of slaveholders into the number of families gives us the most realistic and accurate picture of the prevalence of slave ownership in a given county or state. I contend that it is truly those who wish to misleadingly downplay the percentage of southern society that owned slaves who divide slaveowners into the entire free population of the slave states, usually coming to about 4.5%. To take it to the extreme, one article that I read actually computed percentage of slaveownership by dividing slaveowners into the population of the entire US, reaping an impressively low 1.4%. Hail to Mark Twain.
Cedar
Last edited by cedarstripper; 10-25-2005 at 10:41 PM.
Cedarstripper is absolutely correct. Assume I have a community of 100 people, broken down as follows:
12 white families of 5 people each -- mom, dad and 3 kids = 60 people
40 slaves, owned by three of the twelve white families (or, if you prefer, by 3 of the 12 white "dads").
Which more accurately reflects the prevalence of slave ownership:
1. 3% of the total population owns slaves (the 3 "dads" out of a total population of 100 people)
2. 5% of the total white population owns slaves (the 3 "dads" out of a total white population of 60 people)
3. 25% of the white families own slaves (3 families out of 12)
4. Slaves constitute 40% of the total population.
Options 1 and 2 are plainly misleading. Option 3 certainly is more accurate. In some respects, Option 4 may be the most meaningful figure, both economically and psychologically, for assessing voting patterns. In my hypothetical, although 9 of the 12 white families owned no slaves, some or all of them were probably economically and/or socially dependent on the three white slaveowning families. In addition, those nine families knew they were living in a community that was approaching 50% black and almost certainly feared the consequences if meddling abolitionists and "Black Republicans" freed the slaves.
you see, my campliants do count! you insulted me, I complained to my husband, he counted that as one. I was going to let it slide, but he is a good man and likes to look out for me.
I have a question about counting slaveowners. If a man owns a slave, he is a slaveowner. How does his wife count? Of these two people, husband and wife, is just the husband counted officially, since he is the legal owners, or are both counted?
Only the legal owner is counted. So the man would be the slave owner but not the wife. This is why it's most accurate to refer to slaveholding families, since everyone in the family benefitted from the ownership of the slaves, even though only one person was counted as the legal owner.
Quote:
Originally Posted by matthew mckeon
The impact on the statistic, 25 per cent of Southerners overall were slaveowners is obvious if it omits their wives and children, since persumably they to have experience and a stake in slavery. It would make the antebellum South more slave oriented so to speak.
Correct on the concept, but the 25% refers to slaveowning families, not just slaveowners.
Quote:
Originally Posted by matthew mckeon
Of course if they're counting slave owning families vs. non slave owning families, never mind. Are they? It seems that way from what Cash wrote.
Our discussion concerned slaveholding families, not just slave owners.
12 white families of 5 people each -- mom, dad and 3 kids = 60 people....
I once before used an example of a town of 200 families of 5 people each. Each house had two cars in the driveway, three televisions blaring away, and a dog sleeping in every living room. But under the "only consider the title holder" method, one could say that, if only the father's name was on every deed, dog license, and cable bill, then 80% of the townspeople did not have homes, did not have cars, did not watch TV, and were not covered in dog hair, and therefore presumably would not be personally affected by initiatives to raise taxes on homes, and ban cars, TVs, and dogs.
The other person continued to insist it was I who was trying to mislead by playing with statistics.
Cedar
Last edited by cedarstripper; 10-26-2005 at 03:58 PM.
Actually, cherrypicking a few exceptions to the rule doesn't invalidate the overall correlation. East Tennessee, where slavery was relatively sparse, was overwhelmingly Unionist while West and Middle Tennessee, where slavery was more widespread, was Secessionist.
Cherrypicking? Hardly! I am speaking accurately.
You're speaking accurately about a few exceptions, but inaccurately trying to apply that to the whole. Plus you're speaking of total numbers of slaves rather than the percentage of slaves in the county's population, which is a more accurate way of determining impact of slavery on the population. If we speak of percentage of slaves in the population, then Fayette County, with 63.6% of its population being slaves, tops the list. There's a very good map showing the distribution of slavery in Tennessee counties in Daniel Croft's Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis. It clearly shows the concentration of counties with highest percentages of slaves in their populations being in West and Middle Tennessee, with East Tennessee being relatively sparse compared with the other two regions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RebProf
The idea that Union sentiment was overwhelming in East Tennessee and not found in other areas is untrue and misleading.
Nobody said it wasn't found in other areas. That's a mischaracterization. But secessionist sentiment was greater in the other areas, and there is a strong correlation between the amount of slavery in an area and its secessionist feeling. Union sentiment was indeed overwhelming in East Tennessee, as the results of the February election, the legislative vote, and the May referendum clearly show.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RebProf
Many slaveholders were strongly pro-Union since they clearly understood that the Constutution of the United States absolutely protected slavery.
Some were. William B. Campbell is an excellent example.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RebProf
The reports of the secession debates in Tennessee show many slaveholders opposed secession and became Ckonfederates only after Lincoln called for troops.
76% of the slaveholders who voted in Tennessee in February wanted a secession convention. That's 36% of the proconvention coalition. Only 9% of the anticonvention coalition was made up of slaveholders.
[Statistics found in Daniel Crofts, Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis, p. 187]
It's true the majority of slaveholders in Tennessee were conditional unionists, but that only meant they were unionists until they saw there was no hope for a peaceful solution that would guarantee the existence of slavery. There were very few who, like Andrew Johnson and William B. Campbell, were unconditional unionists.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RebProf
You mischaracterize what McPherson wrote. McPherson's conclusion was that for confederate soldiers, slavery was taken for granted as a southern right
they were fighting for.
It is not I who mischaracterizes McPherson. The good professor states as his personal view that Confederates took slavery for granted. He carefully distances this statement from his historical conclusions as he properly should since the evidence he cites does not support his personal conclusion. Be careful how you read!
I suggest it is indeed you who mischaracterized McPherson. He stated very clearly that 20% of the confederate soldiers expressed the view that they were fighting for slavery, and that not a single confederate soldier claimed he was not fighting for slavery. If we look at the 20% by itself we might not consider that significant, especially if other soldiers said they weren't fighting for slavery. But the fact that no confederate soldier at all contradicted the fighting for slavery claim, combined with that 20%, is significant.
The Slave Power did not emerge in 1860, now did it?
Nor did I claim it did. However, 1860 is a crucial year for the beginning of the Civil War. This is, after all, a Civil War discussion group. By 1860 the slave power consisted almost exclusively of southern states. But let's go back to the 1850s, which was also a crucial decade. Although there were more slaves in the North than in 1860, the trend was moving downward, and the slave power was still almost exclusively confined to the south.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RebProf
A good historian cannot ignore the origins of things, not and be a good historian.
Nobody's ignoring the origin. We can go back to Columbus taking Indian slaves if you want, but the further away we get from 1860 the more problematic it becomes to link it to the Civil War.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RebProf
This thread did not stipulate that we were beginnning our discussion in 1860 so stop trying to dodge the bullet that slavery had national support and was maintained by a national concensus. New York City was a major part of that concensus as were other industrial states who profited from the cheap products of slave labor.
Nobody's dodging anything. We can go back to the 1760s and show that every colony had slavery, but how does that impact on what caused the Civil War? What you appear to be trying to do is basically claim "They did it too" as a distraction. We can show that New York City was a major factor in the illegal slave trade, but it's of doubtful relevancy when talking about the factors leading into the Civil War.
"But I will venture that not one of the named posters will complain about it."
Since I'm not one of those named posters, may I humbly complain (hopefully without being added to anyone's ****list) about it?
I just believe that using most versions of "Shut Up" is clearly not polite, and is certainly uncalled for in legitimate discussion among us brothers and sisters at CWT.
Perhaps one could substitute the phrase "Please forever hold your peace", instead.
Are we not gentlemen and ladies, or if not, should we not aspire to be; at least in this forum, if not on the street corner?
Sam
You were one of the on and on. Did I use any version of "shut up"? Or were you addressing the board? And "Please forever hold your peace" sounds like a version of "shut up" to me.
And I agree. Very nearly all posts avoid flaming and show a sensitivity to the other's feelings. And I don't consider disagreement to be rude. If we didn't disagree, there'd be no point in this forum.
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